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AN ADDRESS 



DEI-IVEH3D BEFORE 



THE PEANKLIN AND WASHINGTON 



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LITERARY SOCIETIES , 

O P 

AT EASTON, PA. 
Sit tj^r Annual Commencement, 

SEPTEMBER H, 1847. ' 



BY THE KEV. JOHN M. KREBS, D. D. 



m. ■ 



S-EASTON, PA. 
PUBLISHED FOR THE COLLEGE 

1847. 



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47 



JOHN WESTALL AND CO., PRINTERS, 

U SPRUCE STREET, NEW-YOBK- 



Lafayette College, Sept. 15th, 1847. 

Mev. J. M. Krebs, D.D.,— 

Dear Sir, — In behalf of the Societies which we respectively represent, 
we tender you our sincere thanks for your very able and highly interesting 
Address, delivered last evening, and would respectfully solicit a copy of 
the same for publication. 

Henry E. Spayd, j 

R. B. FoRESMAN, > Committee of W. L. Society. 

H. M. HoYT, J 

Robert M. Wallace, ^ 

Wm. C. Somerville, > Committee of F. L. Society. 

A. Whiton, 5 



Easton, Sept. lirtfi, 1847. 

Gentlemen, — The Address, delivered last evening, before your Socie- 
ties, having been prepared at their request, is herewith transmitted to you, 
to be disposed of according to your communication of this morning. 

Eespectfully yours, 

John M. Krebs, 
Messrs. Henky E. Spayd, ^c, Committee, 



EDUCATION AND PEOGRESS 



Gentlemen op the Frankmn a?:d Washington Literary Societies 
OF Lafayette College. 

These titles are happily associated. 

When, perhaps too recently for the just demands of this oc- 
casion, I received your request to address you, I nevertheless 
felt myself persuaded, by the combination of these revered 
names Avith each other, and with these academic studies and 
recreations with which they are so significantly blended. I 
found, in the association, something suggestive, both as to the 
themes appropriate to this liteiary festival, and as to the topics 
and methods suited to their illustration. 

Washington ! Franklin ! Lafayette ! names which the world 
delights to honor ! — names interwoven wuth the greatest era of 
modern history ; wnth events that belong to all time, and preg- 
nant wnth the destinies of the human race ! — names that are 
representative of the great principles of social privilege and 
duty, of salutary progress, and true prosperity ! — names canon- 
ized in the calendars of patriotism and philanthropy, and em- 
blazoned in the archives of public and private virtue ! — names 
not all unknown to philosophy ; famed for wisdom and saga- 
ciousness ; patronal of science, industry and art ! W'ith these 
names you would adorn the grove of Academus and fair 
Lyceiun's walk, as indices of the principles that should be 
cherished and the characters that should be formed, by the 
sons and lovers of learning, and as tokens of a covenant with 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 



your country and your kind, that, prominent amid the aims of 

llTO iT-mi iitjII 



life, you will 



the people's rights maintain, 



Unaw'd by influence and unbrib'd by gain ;" 

that from you, also, 

" Shall patriot truth her noblest precepts draw, 
Pledged to religion, liberty and law." 

We hail the omen, — we accept the suggestion which it yields. 
And we would follow this guidance, in making some remarks 

on THE RELATION OF EDUCATED AMERICANS TO THEIR COUNTRYMEN 

AND TO MANKIND, — Considered with reference to the progressive 
character of the present age, the iri/luence of educated men, 
and the principles by which they should be guided, in the ex- 
ertion of that influence. And it is my trust, gentlemen, that 
in approaching these high themes, I shall neither be expected 
nor tempted to speak of them, in any other spirit than becomes 
a Christian patriot and a Christian minister. 

It is manifest to every observing mind that the age in which 
we live is characterised by a restless avidity of change. It is 
not necessary to assert that, in this particular, our age is alto- 
gether different from all that have preceded it. Nor, indeed, 
is such the fact. For remarkable as are the uneasiness of men, 
and the heaving and swelling of the great bosom of society, 
such also has been the characteristic of former times ; individ- 
uals and communities alike partaking, more or less, of the de- 
sire to alter existing arrangements, in the hope — sometimes 
well-founded, but alas ! as often vain — of producing a state of 
things which shall at least be novel, and perhaps advantageous. 
It is indeed a result of that great law of progress which is 
impressed upon society, and under the influence of which, it 
must be admitted that the condition of man has been meliora- 
ted, and the happiness of nations greatly promoted. And, as 
far as that law is in operation, — even where it is perverted and 
misapplied, so as to threaten a mere exchange of evils, or even 
the substitution of a worse condition than that which seems op- 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 7 

pressive, and therefore is attempted to be thrown off — there is 
a propriety in rebuking our fear, and in encouraging our hope, 
and in directing to ourselves the injunction of him, who demon- 
strated that there is nothing new under the sun, " Say not 
thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than 
these ? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." 

But in whatsoever manner former times present examples of 
evils, and are marked with the ruthless spirst of change — where 
old foundations were broken up, and the hearts of the sober 
and the pious too, oft failed for fear of a process that seemed to 
lead to universal degeneracy, while, after all, the result was 
nothing but the reproduction of the image of some more an- 
cient day, — still it can never be the less an occasion of deep 
solicitude to us, to mark the phases which the spirit of change 
assumes among ourselves ; nor the less a duty to consider our 
own responsibilities in the view of it, and to be upon our 
guard, so as to contribute, as far as in us lies, to the shape, di- 
rection and influences which may be impressed upon it for good, 
and to v;ard off the evils which we may justly apprehend, 
should its energies be mis-directed and uncontrolled. While 
the actual progress which society has made, and the real meli- 
oration of man's lot in the earth, (notwithstanding every 
threatening danger of the past, and the liability to error in 
every thing which men manage,) and especially our dependence 
and grounds of confidence in Him, who stilleth all the tumults 
of the people, give us encouragement to hope and trust that 
" that Providence which is abroad upon the universe and pre- 
sides in high authority over the destinies of all worlds," will, 
at all times, establish a proper limit to the waves even of the 
angry sea, and will still continue for our safety, to say, " Thus 
far shalt thou go and no farther." 

Wherever we turn our eyes, we find the spirit of change at 
■work, and man is everywhere 'moved by the impulses of its 
resistless energy. Vicissitude marks peculiarly the history of 
the world, in that period which measures our own history as 
an independent nation. The old and settled order of things, — 
the deep foundations which successive centuries laid, and the 



8 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

progress of other centuries seemed only to enlarge and 
strengthen, are undermined and breaking up. The advance- 
ment of science is changing the whole aspect of human society ; 
new ideas are awakening in the bosom of them that have 
hitherto but vegetated in patient and incurious stolidity ; the 
spirit of liberty is rousing anew from her lethargy ; and the 
political 'movements of governments and of the people under 
them, are contributing their part toward an entire I'evolution 
of the state and aspect of the whole world. 

The American revolution exhibited the spectacle of a young 
and enterprising nation, rising up, Jike a youthful giant to 
burst his bonds, and to throw off the chains of foreign oppres- 
sion, and astonishing the nations of the old Vv^orld by claiming, 
and taking, and maintaining, rank among them. It commenced 
its career, by establishing new institutions of government, 
wherein the necessity of thrones was denied, and no place was 
provided for hereditary kings, — but wherein it was assumed 
and settled, that the rights and happiness of the people are to 
be first considered, in the establishment of governments, the 
adoption of constitutions, the enactments of law, and the erec- 
tion of judicial tribunals. And this great fact, that govern- 
ment is not a tool, put by divine right into the hands of despots, 
but a presiding agency for the Commonwealth, ordained by 
Heaven to be a " terror to evil-doers and a praise to them that 
do well," w^as learned from that great charter of human liberty, 
the Book of God, — whose authority, and truth, and power, 
were so essentially conspicuous in the days that tried men's 
souls, and guided them in laying the foundations of an 
empire of freemen. The working of the system thus set up, 
has demonstrated it to be, on the whole, good and safe for us. 
Under these institutions, efficient, honored and happy, our 
fathers and ourselves, have lived in all good prosperity ; and 
"having obtained help from God, we continue even until now." 

But the influence of this spectacle went forth upon the world, 
" At the altar of American liberty, France lighted her torch of 
wild enthusiasm." But, goaded with the accumulated oppres- 
sions of ancient despotism, the progress of her revolution be- 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 9 

came a frenzy, signalised by excesses which must be deplored 
by every lover of humanity. In the attempt to plant the tree 
of liberty in that vicious soil, men resorted to the " tremendous 
tillage, which begun by clearing with the conflagration, and 
ploughing with the earthquake," and irrigating with human 
blood. Unhappily for France, she had " hardly broken the 
chains of slavery, — and thought to enjoy the benefits of liberty, 
without fulfilling its conditions. She had more enthusiasm 
than virtue, or perseverance. She lacked religious sentiments 
to temper her fervid opinions, and set bounds to her revolution- 
ary acts." And yet the very violence of the effort had its place, 
in ultimately extending the principles of freedom ; in laying their 
foundations in other lands ; and in disseminating those princi- 
ples whose operation has been to shake the nations of Europe 
to their centre, to unsettle the prerogatives of monarchs, and to 
teach kings the obligations of justice and patriotism. The day 
has gone by, when a crowned head could utter from the guard- 
ed recesses of Versailles, the arrogant boast, " I am the state." 
The gloomy repose of the Escurial has been disturbed with the 
shock which, not all in vain, has been emitted from the throes 
and convulsions of the Spanish people blindly struggling to be 
free. Prussia, in the person of her paternal sovereign, makes 
enlarged concessions to the enlightened demands of her children. 
And a new Pope, yielding to the spirit of the age, leads the way 
to the disparagement of his predecessor's infallibility, at least 
as a ruler, by simultaneously allowing the introduction, into the 
states of the Church, of rail- ways, so long dreaded as the chan- 
nels of heresy and rebellion, and by issuing from the Vatican 
such an unwonted boon, as the program of a Constitution and a 
Parliament, — for a people hitherto bound hand and foot under 
the double chain of temporal and'spiritual despotism, united in 
the person of the Vicar of Christ, and well nigh crushed under 
the weight of his triple crown. While, at the same time, borne 
on the winds of Heaven, the seeds of mighty change have been 
carried to the shores of the Bosphorus, and sown in remote Asia 
and Egypt, making their power felt, and producing fruit, in the 
adoption of new arts, and even of some harbingers of civil and 



10 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

religious freedom, among the governments and among the 
people, who have long slumbered and slept, under the lethargic 
changelessness and customary bondage of oriental climes. 

And this result is inevitable in an age distinguished for the 
trophies of art, and the discoveries of science ; — when the press, 
that mighty Orator, is speaking in every secluded valley and on 
the far mountain-top, and myriads upon myriads every day 
listen to its voice ; — when steam is constantly multiplying the 
comforts of life, introducing what were once the exclusive 
luxuries of princes, amidst the commonest necessaries of the 
artisan's and laborer's daily existence, and throwing bridges 
across the vast ocean to bring the nations into closer brother- 
hood ; — when the traveller from western climes disdains the 
time-honored inconveniences of oriental locomotion, and casts 
up the dust upon the Red Sea Coast, with the wheels of his 
stage-coach, that phes whirling along before the startled vision 
of the Arab of the Desert ; or teaches the distant Hindoo to 
abandon his sluggish bark to the Ganges, and cast away his 
palanquin, that, over his arid plains, and penetrating to the 
very fastnesses of his Himmaleh, he may " fly on iron-track 
with wings of fire ;" — when man has even caught the subtle 
lightning, that in a moment flasheth from one part of the heaven 
to the other, confined its track to the tiny thread, with which 
he has girdled the earth, and, realising the fable of old romance, 
has made it the instant and faithful messenger of his thoughts, 
regardless alike of space and time ; — and when, avaihng itself of 
all these agencies, and turning them into means of better 
blessing, the glorious gospel, that has descended from the skies, 
goes forth in its beauty, its brightness, and its power, to pro- 
claim the acceptable year of the Lord, — announcing to the 
bruised and captive nations, the Anointed Deliverer, the healer 
of the broken-hearted, and imparting to the wretched bondman 
of sin, the glorious liberty of the children of God. 

And this is the condition of things in all the world, — such is 
the spirit of the present age. It is a spirit, whose influence 
upon the whole is doubtless beneficial ; and the ultimate result 
of the whole is to overturn, and overturn, and overturn, until He 



EDUCATIOA AND PROGRESS. 11 

shall come, whose right it is to reign, and all the kingdoms of 
the world shall be brought under the safe and sanctified domin- 
ion of the Prince of Peace. 

But while such is the fact, it is not every change that takes 
place, or is projected, that is to be acknowledged as true 
progress. Not every demand that may be made from every 
quarter, is to be venerated and obeyed, as essential to the 
advancement, safety, honor, stability and comfort of society. 
The wildest vagaries of political schemers, the dreams of vis- 
ionary enthusiasts, the intriguing plots of demagogues, the 
clamours of infidel selfishness, may be urged upon us for 
our acceptance, under the pretence of improving our condition. 
These are foisted upon society, from time to time, as if from 
the inventive malignity of the great adversary, that he may 
bring into disrepute the sublime cause of man's advancement, 
or pervert and hinder his progress toward good, under the 
superintending protection and aid of the God of Heaven. But 
even these are often overruled for good ; and when at the worst, 
the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing, and 
change is heralded by the spirit of this watchword of rebellion 
against the great governor of the world, " Let us break His 
bands asunder, and cast His cords from us," — " He that sitteth 
in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall hold them in deri- 
sion :" — "Even the wrath of man shall praise Him, and the 
remainder of wrath, shall he restrain." 

It is ever to be borne in mind, both for our guidance and 
hope, when we would hail the progress of change, or when 
we dread its excesses, that our help and governor is on high. 
We are dependent every way on the will of God; and ours 
must be the great care, in contributing to the advancement of 
society, in consulting for the liberty and happiness of men, 
ourselves or others, and in labouring for the prosperity of onr 
country, that no grand foundation principle which God has 
established, which has given strength, beauty and efficiency 
to the forms of law and polity, be overlooked, or set at naught, 
or violently overturned. In the view of this duty, and with 



12 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

wise jealousy of rash and inconsiderate change, the Christian 
and patriot heart inquires, " If the foundations be destroyed, 
what can the righteous do !" If the true and stable principles 
of government be disregarded ; — if rulers become ambitious, 
unjust and oppressive ; — if the laws are founded on selfishness, 
and are moulded by temporary expediency ; — if the tribunals 
become forgetful that they are exponents of high precepts of 
truth and equity which belong to the harmonies of the universe 
and have their origin and seat in the bosom of God ; — if the 
insane demands of a misguided populace prevail to the over- 
throw of the well-settled principles of law and order, which 
have been divinely sanctioned ; — or if popular ebullition usurp 
the place of lawful authority, and fulmine its will as equal or 
paramount to the will of the state, or even of Him who " or- 
dained the powers that be," — then are there elements of anarchy, 
oppression, and despotism at work, — whether wielded by one 
tyrant or a million — which will undermine all the peace, the 
rights and the safety of all the friends of law and order ; 
their efforts for the pubhc good will be paralysed ; and, sooner 
or later, not only will they be exterminated, but the land itself, 
the precious and the vile together, will be involved in univer- 
sal wretchedness, and overthrown by the just vengeance of Him 
who sitteth in the heavens, and shall speak to them in His wrath, 
and vex them in His hot displeasure. 

The happiness and prosperity of a community are intimately 
connected with its sense and manifestation of dependence on 
God. By him, kings reign, and princes decree justice. His 
favor is on the families that call upon his name ; but the nation 
and kingdom that Avill not serve him, He has decreed shall utterly 
perish. As a people we have signally enjoyed His protection. 
When He cast out the heathen before the original planters, defen- 
ded them against the savage, increased their strength, preserved 
them from being swallowed up by their enemies, and finally 
made them a nation, — in despite of the obstacles which beset 
their infancy and weakness, the tremendous difficulties under 
which their independence was vindicated, and the threatening 



EDUCATION AND PKOGRESS. 13 

(dangers of anarchy and dissolution which preceded the estab- 
lishment of their constitution and government, — there is evi- 
dently to be seen the hand of God. 

And this hand was seen ; the dependence of the people on 
Him was recognized and acknowledged. For, as in all those 
early attempts to colonize the land which were begun for mere 
purposes of commerce and gain, without reference to religious 
considerations, disaster, disappointment, death and extermina- 
tion, were remarkably the result, so the successful enterprises 
were those precisely which begun and were continued in open 
reliance on the Almighty arm, and under the avowed influence 
of the principles of the Bible, and for the sake of conscience 
and the truth. 

The men who engaged in these enterprises were urged by 
the spirit of religious liberty ; they came for the purpose of 
seeking an asylum for the pure worship of God, when this 
freedom was denied them in their native land. And although 
they smarted under the oppressions of ecclesiastical tyranny 
and arbitrary bigotry, they could well separate these abuses, 
from the obligation and the privilege of acknowledging and 
serving the God of Heaven, according to the principles which 
they had derived from his word. They felt that the foundations 
of their infant empire could be laid with safety and hope, only 
as they were cemented by the influence of religion, and sustain- 
ed by the institutions of the Bible. We may see this fact, in 
all their religious institutions, in their sanctuaries, ministers 
and Bibles, their prayers, and public fasts and thanksgivings as 
commonwealths, their family government, their schools and 
rising colleges, their offices, tribunals and laws, and in all their 
constitutions, and all their public acts. And it is to this fact 
we are indebted for those strong Christian and protestant peculi- 
arities which hav€ been impressed upon the public conscience, 
and find a place in all the laws and constitutions of our land. 
in perfect consistency with the widest latitude of religious 
freedom. If in this last respect they were not at once inspired 
with the full conception of the wider ideas that have since pre- 
Tailed, let it still be remembered that these ideas were more 



14 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

than shadowed forth in them, and had then their first and largest 
development in all the world, and that moreover, liberty is not 
licentiousness, and every community possesses the inherent right 
of providing for its own internal peace and order. The full 
toleration of all religious sentiments has been of slow growth 
hi our world ; and its comprehensive meaning and practical re- 
cognition have not, perhaps, been yet attained, even by those 
who most love to asperse the alleged shortcomings of our 
founders. I remember well, that until a very few years ago, 
Jews were ineligible to public office in my honored and be- 
loved native State of Maryland. I well remember the fierce- 
ness of the contest which preceded their enfranchisement. Yet 
that illiberal disfranchisement was a part of the original char- 
ter of the State, and, for a long time, was not deemed out of 
place. And although it has been boasted by and on behalf of 
the Catholic proprietary and his followers that they were sig- 
nally the leaders, in the extension of toleration, even of those 
by whom they were themselves proscribed, yet, let this be 
observed, that, as far as the toleration of Protestants was con- 
cerned, it could not have been prevented under a charter granted 
by the king of Protestant Engl and . 

But, to return from this brief digression. While a sense of 
obligation to God, is still extensively a feature of the public 
mind, it does not exist without considerable drawback and de- 
facement. The very freedom of our religious institutions, the 
appropriate separation of Church and State, the constitutional 
exemption of the government from all interference with our 
ecclesiastical organizations, and the very jealousy with which 
these principles are insisted upon by all classes and sects of our 
people, produce a tendency to forget our dependence on God 
as a people, and our obligation to his laws, to abstract their 
duties and destinies as such, from every thing which is not mere- 
ly temporal, expedient and popular, in contradistinction from 
those things which are spiritual in their nature, and belong to 
the thought and essence of our subordination to God. In the 
practical working of our system, the opinion is sometimes 
avowed, and oftener implied, that as a state, or nation, we have 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 15 

nothing" whatever to do with rehgion,in any shape or form,be- 
yond the bare protection of all persons in the free exercise of 
that form of religion which they may prefer. 

Now this is perfectly true in a certain sense. That is to say, 
— and it is our safety that it is so, — the State may not estab- 
lish and endow any sectarian form of religion whatever, nor 
prohibit the free exercise of any, nor disfranchise any man on 
the account of his religious opinions. But because this is so, 
is the State at liberty to disregard the great principles and uni- 
versal precepts of the Bible, — or is the nation exempted from 
all allegiance to God "? 

Men may assert that, as Commonwealths, they have nothing 
to do with religion ; they may strive to separate government 
from its influence, and to set up human wisdom and human will, 
and their own notions of prosperity and duty, against the clear 
methods and laws of God, to regard all religions, and all irre- 
ligion with equal indifference, to discard the Bible from their 
legislation, and to train the rising youth apart from its instruc- 
tion and commandment. But God permits not the severance. 
He will rebuke or pimish it. You may cast him off: but he 
will not be thus cast off with impunity. Wo unto the nations, 
when God shall abandon them ! 

The constitutions under which we live, have well defined 
the boundaries which separate Church and State ; but they 
have not severed religion and the State, while they have, with 
equal felicity, defined the exact relations of the one to the other, 
and not disjoining, but embracing them both, have established 
such a connection as, I pray, may forever continue. In the 
model and basis of tha laws ; in the forms of administering 
justice ; in the use of the oath ; in the recognition of the Lord's 
day — that fundamental and peculiar mark of the Christian 
religion; in the well-settled decisions of the judicial tribu- 
nals ; in the adoption of the common law ; and in the con- 
stitutions of the United States, and of this Commonwealth and 
of other States, Christianity, or the religion of the Bible, is 
prominently recognized as a component element of our 



16 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

civil institutions^ as part and parcel of the law of the 
land. 

The State has gone to this length of so establishing and re- 
cognizing Christianity that, while it tolerates Jew, Turk, Cath- 
olic and Infidel, and disfranchises none of them, it never in- 
tended, by this free and universal toleration, to concede any 
great fundamental principle of the Divine law, or true social 
order, to the demands of either. And until the whole Constitu- 
tion is changed, our courts reorganized, and their decisiohs nulli- 
fied by a complete revolution of all our principles of government, 
yea, until our whole people are thoroughly degenerated, this 
Christianity is in force ; and every claim, pretence and de- 
mand, that goes to the abrogation of an iota of it, or would 
strip it of its paramount authority, in our legislation, is a 
treasonable assault upon the great foundations upon which all 
our municipal statujtes, as well as the true rights, liberties and 
happiness of the people repose. 

And, if it is objected that this fact is a hardship upon those 
who, on pretence of the rights of conscience, would pervert 
our institutions, patronize indifferent ism, irreligion, and infi- 
delity, and to abrogate Divine laws, we can see, at once, its 
absurdity and unrighteousness, by considering what would be 
the result, if the same demand and the same pretence were 
urged by a community of Mahommedans who might settle 
among us,^ — for the country is open to all, — and who should urge, 
e. g., that the reading of the Bible in the public schools is an 
infringement of the rights of conscience, because .it disagrees 
with the Koran 's or, if they should insist that the practice of 
polygamy ought not to be punished, because their prophet had 
sanctioned it 1 Would our municipal laws yield before such a 
pressure from without, or from within ? Would we so mis-inter- 
pret and distort our principles respecting freedom of conscience? 
Would the state deem itself bound to sacrifice to every shade 
of opinion, and concede every thing to every body ? — to abdi- 
cate its high prerogatives as in some sort a Teacher, and to be- 
come a mere reflection of all the conflicting prejudices and 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 17 

vagaries of its subjects — as some would have the pulpit and 
the press to be — mere echoes to every wind of doctrine ? and, 
losing its office as a guiding intelligence, to subside into a sort 
of enthroned — 

" Monstrum horrendum, injvrme, ingens, cui lianen ademp' 
turn," — and numen ademptum, too 1 

But, we have not so learned liberty ; the legislator thinks it 
not unmeet to restrain that latitudinarian conscience which 
falsehood and infidelity have formed, by sanctioning the law 
of Christ that marriage is to be between one man and one 
woman only, and by sending the man who violates it, to the 
state prison. 

Beside the appropriate sense of dependence on God, I may, 
not unsuitably, advert to the office and authority of human 
government, and the obligation of law, as prescribed means 
for the attainment and security of human happiness, in con- 
trast with some ideas which seem to conflict with just views of 
these high interests and agencies. 

The object of government is the benefit of the whole com- 
munity J and government itself is a Divine institution, without 
which no community can exist. Nor is there safety in any 
idea, that the authority of government and the obligation of 
law depend on the mere will of accidental majorities, or the 
provisions of some imaginary social compact. It seems to 
me, that there could be no stability, no security in such a state. 
The waves of the sea are not more capricious and dangerous, 
than would be the ebullition of the popular will, or the deter- 
mination of a majority accidentally collected and clothed with 
the power, which, in its exercise at the caprice of the moment, 
would proceed on the principle that might makes right, — a 
principle as odious when it is proclaimed to enforce the dicta- 
tion of the populace, as it is seen to be and hated in the decrees 
of a despot. But, if government be of God, and they that 
bear the power, no matter under what names, or with what 
forms inducted, are His ministers attending continually to this 
very thing, — they must be just, ruling in the fear of God. 
Their function must be invested with sacredness in the public 
2 



18 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

view, not only as it is animated with authority from Him, 
but as that authority becomes conspicuous in the justice of the 
laws which it enacts, and thus contributes to impress the pub- 
lic conscience with a sense of its majesty, — an idea which is at 
the basis of all peaceful obedience. It is not intended to assert 
that no changes are ever to be made in particular municipal 
statutes, or even in the fundamental and organic forms of law. 
Its great principles are eternal, — while human legislation may 
have misinterpreted and misapplied them. Our nation stands 
"upon the assertion that, when any government becomes des- 
tructive of the great ends of its institution, it is the right and 
duty of the people to abolish it, and introduce the appropriate 
substitute. But what is intended is, that, in the whole process 
of establishing, modelling and modifying, the efficacy and the 
value of all that is done, not only depend upon its being sol- 
emnly, deliberately, and constitutionally accomplished, but 
grow essentially out of the principle, that, back of all human 
authority, in the premises, is to be discerned and invoked the 
awful form, the directing intelligence, the controlling majesty 
and supreme authority of Divine law. Under this principle, 
law will take its salutary shapes, and enforce its obligations, 
not because they are expedient, but because they are right. 
Its precepts will bind the conscience, because they are just ; its 
penalties will be enforced, because they are deserved. And the 
rule and standard by which these are formed, may be known 
to be equitable, from the fact that it lias been set up by the 
Judge of all the earth. In the evolution of this process, it is 
supposed that the legislator shall look for his precedents to the 
immutable and universal principles of the Divine law. His 
business is to develop and carry out these principles. In their 
application, and sometimes in the very copy of the precept, as 
it is recorded in the book of God, he' is to provide for the 
maintenance of impartial justice, between man and man ; for 
the defence and protection of the innocent and helpless; 
for the aid of the suffering and destitute ; and for the punish- 
ment of the criminal. And in ascertaining what is just, and 
right, and what is merciful or criminal, and what award the 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 19 

law should give, — he consults not the ever-varying and selfish 
notions of men, but — I repeat it — the grand, safe and control- 
ling principles of the revealed will of God. And, although 
we may lament, that because of the imperfection of men, there 
is a falling short of the perfect realization of this beautiful and 
sublime theory, in all, even our best legislation, yet we have 
but to compare the laws which have grown up under the light 
of our Bible Christianity, with those of other people, to see at 
once, the immeasurable superiority of all our municipal regu- 
lations for the enforcement of judgment and mercy. 

Connected with the character of the laws, is the method of 
their administration. This, of course, under the theory of 
which I have spoken, would be prompt, fair, and effective. The 
executive power would understand his strength, and feel his ob- 
ligations, and would find an aid to his administration, both in 
the sanctions of his personal character, and in the cheerful sup- 
port and happy obedience of the people, recognizing the au- 
thority from which law emanated, and rallying by the side of 
him in whom they saw God's minister, a terror on/y, but always, 
to the evil doer, and a praise of them that do well. Under 
such a sway, the people would lead a quiet and peaceable life, 
in godliness and honesty. Tone would be given to the public 
morals ; and the constant action and reaction of a government 
and people, so closely related and identified, — and of the mu- 
tual influences so necessary especially in a republic like ours, — 
would tend to the purity of law and to the equity and^ happi- 
ness of those upon whom it is enjoined. Hence the importance 
of imbuing our whole people with the idea of the^supremacy 
over us of God's laws, and with a pervading reverence for 
them because they are His. And when a government and peo- 
ple love these principles and co-operate to give them influence, 
they are established on firm foundations — upon a basis impreg- 
nable, immoveable, and imperishable. 

But it is nevertheless to be observed, that by the very side of 
the marks and monuments, the limits and safeguards which are 
set up in the bosom of our institutions — conservative both of 
the freedom of conscience and the rights of God, — there seems 
to be growing up a disposition, partially fostered, — not as we 



20 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

have seen, by the legitimate design and operation, but by the 
perversion of true religious liberty, — and cherished by the rest- 
less radicalism of the age, to assert and establish independence 
even of the throne of God. 

This feeling is at the basis of all those arguments by which 
infractions of specific divine laws are sustained or advocated. 
If, for example, it is desired to abrogate or render inoperative, 
the laws respecting the sacredness of the Sabbath, — or if, in 
order to accommodate the gentle squeamishness of those senti- 
mental gentlemen who think it cruel to hang men for murder, 
it is proposed to abrogate all capital punishment," — it is thought 
sufficient to disparage the Sabbath as a Jewish institution, and 
to assert that capital punishment is a mere relic of a barbarous 
age ; — forgetful that both these institutions, like others that are 
depreciated by the counterfeit genius of modern civilization, 
were incorporated into a code, made not for Jews but for man, — 
by the authority of God, — and at an era and among a people, 
whose elevated civilization is illustrated in the earliest authentic 
history, and the most intelligible ethnological monuments of 
any of the nations of the earth ; and whose advancement, not 
only long preceded the boasted eras of classical renown, but 
may vie with these, in arts and learning, in poetry, in refine- 
ment, in political sagacity, in domestic manners, and in social 
laws. 

We are told that too great a strictness in holding to the au- 
thority of the Bible, in matteis of national and municipal legis- 
lation, is inconsistent with the genius of our popular institutions, 
and that it is time to discard statutes and notions which are up- 
held only by a few old-fashioned, narrow-minded people, who 
have an awkward habit of reading the Bible in its plain mean- 
ing, and of insisting that its precepts are to be obeyed by Chris- 
tian nations and republican states, as well as by individuals. 
Not a few have found a charm to conjure with, in the newly in- 
vented phrases, "our mission," "our destiny," and the high 
prerogatives of "the Anglo-Saxon race," — terms of talismanic 
potency to change the moral character even of rapacity and 
-fraud; and all the delicate questions and dubious moralities that 
interpose between the tremendous alternatives of peace and 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 21 

war, are adjusted by the logic of an appeal to " national ho- 
nor," and " necessity, the tyrant's plea 3" and even the trou- 
blesome responsibilities that embarrass our meditations of foreign 
conquest, or, like intrusive spectres, disturb our visions of " re- 
velry in the halls of the Montezumas," are all relieved as with 
the power of enchantment, by the simple utterance of such 
dainty figures of speech, as " conquering a peace," and " extend- 
ing the area of freedom." 

There are again, profound illuminati, both of foreign and do- 
mestic growth, who meet in " World's Conventions," and grave- 
ly resolve that the whole organization of society is fundamen- 
tally wrong, and needs to be re-cast and moulded anew by these 
plastic schemers, on the philanthropic principle of giving every 
thing to every body; converting land and marriage, and domes- 
tic happiness — that only bliss of Paradise which has survived 
the fall — and I know not but talent and skill, and such like odi- 
ous monopolies, into the common capital of a vast joint-stock 
company, and bringing in the Millennium, by devices as nota- 
ble and ingenious as the famous project of the philosophers of 
Laputa, to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. In this program 
of reform, the " Spirit of the Age " and the " light of the 19th 
century," are set up and invoked as the presiding deities, in 
moulding the institutions and principles of public and private 
life ; and these are to be the guides and standards in the enact- 
ment and administration of laws, if indeed any laws are to be 
tolerated ; — and especially all such statutes as are made for the 
•punishment of the lawless and disobedient, of murderers of 
fathers and murderers of mothers, and any other thing that is 
contrary to sound doctrine — seeing that they are very inconve- 
nient and oppressive to the votaries of the largest liberty, — must 
give way, because it is un-republican to impose even divine pre- 
cepts upon a free people. And of little more respectability is 
the popular clamor, that the voice of the people is the voice of 
God ; so that whatever a multitude, or a majority may decree at 
any time, is to be taken as the will of Heaven, more clearly 
and authoritatively expressed than in the plain and solemn re- 
velation of His word. And amid the various phases of mere 



22 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS, 

party politics, wherein great principles are degraded into the 
mere foot-balls of contending factions, all distinctions of right 
and wrong are confounded, and the very moral sense of men 
becomes deadened, while the proprieties of social life are out- 
raged, not only does it happen that those, who ought to be 
leaders and teachers of all that is great and patriotic, become 
mere demagogues and deceivers, inculcating the most corrupt- 
ing sophistries, but that, in turn, they become themselves the 
veriest slaves, lost to all integrity, firmness, and independence. 
The people cannot always be kept in the position of hewers of 
wood and drawers of w^ater ; they will sometimes think and re- 
solve for themselves; and then, when it is found that their pre- 
judices will not yield, it would be amusing, if it were not so pitiful, 
to see with what facility, those who court the popular favor can 
succumb to the necessities of their dependence, and how sub- 
servient they become to the wisdom which is enshrined in the 
bosoms of sovereign electors, and which can utter its oracles so 
potently through the lips of the ballot-box. I am far from 
asserting that the people are never right ; I am only speaking 
of them as the holders of power. To these are accommodated 
the elastic principles which, like lucifer matches, are warranted 
to keep in all climates, or like modern almanacs, which are 
calculated for every meridian. The changing colors of the 
cameleon are not more rapid and fitful than the hues, however 
opposite, which differing latitudes elicit ; and it is equally con- 
venient to swear that that measure is white to-day, which, only 
yesterday, they asseverated was black. Does even a measure 
in itself right, and known to be so, elicit the opposition of a 
considerable portion of the community, either from ignorance 
or misrepresentation — or, on the other hand, is some measure, 
which is wrong and hurtful, for the moment, a favorite with 
the electors, then, how quick to acquiesce, or seem to ac- 
quiesce ; and if the ends of personal or party ambition demand, 
even the clear, well established principles of law and constitu- 
tion are overleaped, thrown down, or undermined ; when the 
duty of a true statesman, instead of pandering to selfishness, 
and trimming to suit the popular breeze, blow shiftingly as it 



EDUCATION A^ro PROGRESS. 23 

will, is to throw himself Upon his principles, to use his advan- 
tages of clearer insight, for enlightening and guiding the popular 
mind to that which is right ; and that, whether he sink or 
swim ; yea, if needs be, to stand alone, and fail, and suffer and 
die, with a brave and true heart, rather than involve the liberty 
and prosperity of his country, by playing the fawning sycophant, 
and flattering the people to their destruction : — 

Justum et tenacem propositi virum. 
Not! civium ardor prava jubentium, 
Non vultus instantis tyranni, 
Mente quatit solida. 

Herein are some of the controversies and contests in which 
our prosperity and adversity are involved — some of the phases 
in which the spirit of progress appears, or, speaking more 
accurately, the spirit of " change, perplexing nations." We 
have the clearest right, and it is our duty too, claiming to be 
whole and sound-hearted freemen and patriots, as the descend- 
ants of the men who won our inheritance at the point of the 
sword, and died, bathed in their own blood, that they might 
bequeath to us this goodly land, and who established these 
governments for the good of the peaceful, the virtuous, the 
oppressed, the industrious, and, of the pious too, to ponder well 
the question. What shall the end of these things be 1 And 
how may we so act our part, that we may help, and not hinder, 
the true design of these great institutions, — that we may serve 
our generation by the will of God. 

Ours is a popular government. You and I too, are a part of 
the people. We have an interest in the institutions and in the 
laws, which gives it to us as a prerogative, to see that they 
are not perverted ; and in those that rule over us, to see that 
they be patriots, honest, capable, disdaining bribes and fearing 
God. And we have an interest in om' freedom and religion, our 
personal rights, and our children's inheritance, to see that none 
of these become the sport of change and confusion, nor subject 
to the mere mercy of the passing whim, whether of infidel phi- 
losophers and " Theophilanthropists," of visionary sentimental- 
ists and sympathizers with crime, of ambitious demagogues and 



24 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

arrogant propagandists with great swelling words of vanity, 
promising liberty and spreading their own corruption — or, of 
any of the multitudinous host of quack reformers, that stand 
ready, each to administer some newly invented panacea for 
social diseases, as if, according to the spirit of that biting 
jibe,— 

Our constituiio7is " were intended 
For nothing else but to be mended." 

I have spoken somewhat freely. But I have not spoken as 
if I believed our foundations were crumbling ; for I have hope 
in God, and under Him, in such as you, for the generations to 
come. 

You, gentlemen, are in training to enter into public life in 
the midst of these agitations. You are, at once, to feel their 
influence, and to exert an influence in shaping and directing 
Ihem. Even the class to w^hich you belong, and the educa- 
tional systems and institutions, under which you are trained, 
have not been left to the stagnation of undisturbed repose. 
While our own age and country have made important progress 
toward just ideas of the necessity, and of the duty of the State 
to establish a system of universal education, there seems to be 
on the part of some of its advocates, a disposition to view the 
higher institutions of learning with jealousy, and to object to 
their enjoyment of State patronage, as inconsistent with the 
powers of the government, and as monopolies, the benefits of 
"which are confined to the rich and the few, and therefore ought 
to be supported entirely by the voluntary benefactions of private 
munificence. It is perfectly true that the most essential aid has 
teen received for these institutions of our land, from private 
sources, with comparatively little assistance from the public 
purse ; and that the great transatlantic universities, were also 
founded and largely endowed by the private gifts of royal and 
other patrons. And precisely here is a noble field for the exer- 
cise of a patriotic and enlightened munificence, by those per- 
sons among us, to whom Providence has given great wealth j 
whose large and adequate benefactions may become at once 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 25 

effective in laying broad and deep the permanent foundations 
of the higher education. 

What can such men do better with their superabundant stores 
than to employ them in such munificence as this ? How far 
nobler to connect their names with the endowment of a pro- 
fessor's chair, a library, or a College Hall, than to be content 
with the paltry distinction of a splendid palace in Union Square 
or Chestnut street, and a dashing equipage at Saratoga, or to 
heap up an excessive fortune to be dissipated by spendthrift 
heirs ! Wealth is a magnificent prerogative to those who 
know how to use it ; to those who know no other use for it 
than to minister to selfishness and vanity, it is, what the wise 
man says of a fair woman without discretion, a "jewel of gold 
in a swine's snout." All honor to the men who in earlier 
days, in our own country, have laid such foundations of useful- 
ness, in consecrating even slender means to the cause of learn- 
ing. All honor to the men of our own times, worthy of the 
title of merchant princes, whose names are bound up with the 
history of the chairs, and libraries, and halls they have endowed. 
Would, too, that there were among us more of the spirit that 
can imitate, as well as admire, the beneficence of living names, 
the modesty of whose owners I may not shock by uttering 
them. Then would not so many of our colleges and semina- 
ries still be left to languish. Then would your own institution 
be set indeed upon a hill, strong and stable as that which bears 
up its foundations, and diffuse far and wide, an hundred-fold 
such healthful influences as would be cheaply purchased with 
the abstraction of a few useless thousands from the overflowing 
coffers of even a very few men. 

Nevertheless there seems to be a peculiar reason, in a coun- 
try so characterised by popular institutions, where the State is 
eminently organized as a commonwealth, that the institutions of 
learning should neither be thrown upon the chances of occasion- 
al patronage, however princely it may be, nor left to struggle, 
in precarious dependence, upon the inadequate support of more 
general contributions ; but should be fostered, to the fullest ex- 
tent needful for their eflSciency, by legislative and public boun- 



26 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS, 

ty. Why should they not become the public care ? If it be 
admitted that popular education is the appropriate care of the 
State, why not also, a suitable provision for the higher learning ? 
Is its cost an objection ? What is its cost in comparison with 
the expense of war, the losses of misgovernment, and pecula- 
tion, and prodigal waste of public treasure, which, however no- 
torious, excite so little real emotion in the breasts of " econo- 
mists and calculators ?" — and what, in comparison with the pre- 
ventive influences, economical and prudent outlays, and effective 
applications of means, in all those departments of the public 
service, which require the presence of science and skill, to- 
gether with all the benefits diffused throughout a community, 
leavened with the guiding and instructive influences of its more 
intelligent members ? What, — I revert to the example now 
solely for illustration, — what has been the expense to the na- 
tion, of the Military Academy, whose importance has been re- 
cognized by the government from its foundation, — in compari- 
son with the character and skill of the officers it has educated, 
the discipline and efficiency of our armies, and the advantages 
that have resulted, not only for the exigences of war, but for 
the advancement of science and the arts, and their application 
to works of internal improvement, and other benefits which 
have been carried directly or indirectly, by the scholars it has 
sent forth, into all the peaceful walks of life. Is the objection 
pressed, that these institutions are established for a favored few, 
and therefore have no claim on the republic 1 . Have the public 
no interest in pursuits, prosecuted with the assistance of all 
needful facilities, for the advancement of science and its appli- 
cation to the arts, and comforts, and improvements of social life ? 
And where are these so likely to be secured as in institutions, 
and imder circumstances, that stimulate investigation and disco- 
very — with all the requisite devotion, leisure and capacities, 
which are supposed to characterfse academical and University 
Education ? While, in the effort for popularising and diffusing 
knowledge by means of common schools, we may distribute a 
a small portion to all, there may be a process of dilution and 
attenuation, like that of beating gold, but there must also be 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 2? 

more solid utensils and circulating coin ; and neither gold leaf, 
nor gold coin are to be obtained without the agency of some, 
whose business it is to work the mines, and smelt the ore, and 
prepare the precious metal for the necessities of common life. 
I do not say that knowledge and invention are exclusively the 
product of institutions expressly devoted to the purpose. There 
have been self-made men, like our own Franklin, self-educated 
scholars, inventors and discoverers, who have not enjoyed these 
facilities ; men worthy of all praise for the perseverance with 
which they have pursued knowledge under difficulties : but, in- 
stead of forming a general rule, these are but the exceptions 
that prove an opposite system. • "What would many such have 
been, but for the stimulus and preparation derived from those 
who went before them, and on whose labors they only entered 1 
even if they were as ingenious as Ferguson, whose original and 
independent discoveries were, previous to his inquiries, which 
he prosecuted in the fields by star-light, or with the simple ap- 
paratus he had invented and set up in the attic of his father's 
barn,— already better known by the learned and the world. 
What if, by the light of the embers upon a cottage-hearth, or 
of a burning pine-knot, the humble scholar devoured books, 
filching time from needful sleep, — who wrote these books, and 
recorded in them, the achievements of philosophy 1 Or what, 
if like Jean Paul Richter when his poverty and modesty com- 
bined to deprive him of the privileges of access to the teachers 
of the University, even after he had resorted to it, the 
ardent thirst of knowledge slaked itself and found consola- 
tion still in books ; where were the fountains from whence 
these streams flowed to him, and who were they that un- 
sealed and opened them, and set them flowing 1 It does 
not invariably need, that, in order to gain the benefits of 
an University education the student should be matriculated 
among its sons. There are private channels, through which the 
healing waters may be drawn off, but there must be a fountain 
head and a reservoir somewhere. What, too, might not such 
students have become, if, instead of being oppressed with 
difficulties, they had pursued knowledge with the assistance 
of all appropriate means and appliances ? Who have more 



28 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

lamented their own deficiencies, or shown more generous 
zeal in behalf of institutions for supplying to other learn- 
ers the facilities, the books, the apparatus, the teachers, the lei- 
sure, they themselves had lacked ? And what can more ad- 
vance science, and contribute to universal education, than the 
establishment of institutions, which not only concentrate and 
combine the various knowledges of the past, however or by 
whom acquired, but add to these stores by new discovery and by 
urging it forward, while these increasing and inexhaustible 
riches are distributed abroad throughout the land by every scho- 
lar whom they educate ; like reservoirs which not only collect 
the waters flowing through ancient channels, but continually 
enlarge their resources by opening new fountains and building 
new aqueducts, and both refresh those who come to draw thence 
for their own thirst, and disperse their healthful streams abroad 
by means of every one who has filled his urn from their unsealed 
fulness — the overflowings of their limpid treasuries. Let it not 
be thought that these institutions are but the cloistered abodes 
of monkish exclusives and learned drones, ignorant of practi- 
cal life, and without sympathy with its duties and its wants, — 
mere dreamy visionaries, — purblind and spectacle-bestrid, — fit 
subjects for the jealousy of the sons of toil, or for the sneers of 
witlings, political and civil, or rather uncivil, — as walking Cy- 
clopaedias of useless lore, and foolish builders of " light-houses 
in the sky." The great Universities of the world have drawn 
around them the men of philosophic toil and patient investiga- 
tion, alike receiving their contributions, and developing their 
power, while training them to enlighten, to bless and to delight 
mankind. In them and in kindred institutions, were fostered 
the geniuses which belong to no class, no country, and no age; 
the Bacons who taught men to think, and delivered them from 
the bondage of blind authority, and from the erratic and incon- 
clusive reasonings of theory and speculation ; the Lockes, who 
revealed the " secret wonders of the working mind;" the New- 
tons, who weighed the stars in balances, and gave the world a 
practically beneficial astrology, instead of the horoscopes and 
nativities of star-gazers and prognosticators ; the Miltons, whose 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 29 

sublime muse " awoke to ecstacy, the living lyre," and charmed 
and purified the heart with poesy and song. These, and 
such as these, the great lights of the world, shone not for 
themselves ; their labors ended not upon themselves ; being 
dead, they still live, in the memories of grateful hearts, in the 
benefits they have conferred upon their race. They opened 
fields of knowledge, wherein the common mind may freely ex- 
patiate. Through them, Astronomy illumes the midnight 
pathway of the mariner upon the deep ; the discipline and 
analysis of the pure mathematics furnish formulas for the me- 
chanic, abridging his labor and giving to his materials their 
greatest eflficiency ; Chemistry unlocks its treasures for the ar- 
tisan and the agriculturist ; History instructs with its intelligi- 
ble " examples ;" and Law learns the true principles of equity 
and vindicates its supremacy, in the justice and simplicity of 
its precepts. The ship-yard and the work-shop, the counting- 
house and the exchange, the field, the forest and the mine, the 
palace and the cottage, the halls of legislation, and the se- 
cluded dwelling, and the very clink of the hammer, the plow- 
man's whistle, and the cheerful milk-maid's song, and all that 
comes home to men's business and bosoms, are instinct with the 
influences which emanate from these sources, and blessed with 
the comforts and the refinements with which their streams are 
freighted ? And can we, can our country afford to lose from 
our galaxy, these stars, which if they rose in other hemispheres, 
shone upon our fathers, and still shine on us 1 — or can we afford 
to part with the names and labors of those w'ho under the same 
systems, grew up upon our own soil — men with whom Wisdom 
and Prudence dwelt, and the knowledge of witty inventions '? 
And shall we discard the nurseries of such minds as useless, if 
notperniciou sneglect, and hate, and vilify them, as the nur- 
series of indolence, the repositories of learned lumber, and their 
pupils as the minions of an unequal favoritism ? Allow me to 
use a homely, but forcible illustration : " Of what use," said 
a worthy farmer, to a pale young student, who was sojourning 
with him, " of what use is it for you to sit day after day, por- 
ing over books t My son goes out into the field, and improves 



30 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

his health, while he labors for his own support, and produces 
food for others." " What plow does your son use ?" was the 
only answer. The farmer described the implement, and added 
in commendation of it, that it was of three-fold value, com- 
pared with the old-fashioned utensils with which he had former- 
ly wrought. His youthful guest in the meanwhile, had turned 
over the leaves of a book of drawings, and at length, with a 
quiet smile, pointing to one of them, inquired if the favorite 
plow were any thing like that ? " The very model," was the 
astonished reply. " I think it possible then," said the youth 
modestly, " that I may have been of some use to my fellow- 
men, for I am the inventor of that plow." 

Permanently endowed institutions of learning may be consi- 
dered in another aspect. I revert to the objection that their 
benefits are provided only for the rich, — and that such only, or 
such as may be patronised by them, can have access to these 
privileges. Hence too it is said, that their support should be 
derived only from the voluntary contributions of men of wealth, 
and from those whom they educate. I am free to say that this 
objection springs from the narrowest possible view, and the po- 
licy it suggests is not only short-sighted, but would convert 
these fountains for the general welfare into the most odious mo- 
nopolies indeed. What would it be but to confine the higher 
education to the most favored class, and to exclude with the 
force of an iron necessity, every youth, no matter how promis- 
ing, whose means are small, and leave him to struggle in hope- 
less poverty, or to abandon all hope of attaining the goal of a 
generous ambition ? 

Genius and talent are not the exclusive prerogatives of rank 
and wealth ; nature will, sometimes, on soils that can produce 
nothing else, breed such men, as never grew in hothouses, nor in 
her tropical climes. In the humblest employments, and in the 
abodes of the poor, are minds whose powers cannot all be conceal- 
ed. They belong to their country and their race ; and it is surely 
true policy to evoke them from their obscurity, and to assist their 
enterprise, and fit them for the appropriate exercise of their high 
endowments. If it be impracticable to do this in every case, it is 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 31 

nevertheless no part of true wisdom so to hedge up their way, 
that few or none shall emerge into the light, and to abandon 
them to darkness and neglect. Neither is it necessary to make 
such ample provision that all who aspire to a liberal education 
shall be transferred from poverty to halls and foundations, which 
shall pamper indolence and corrupt their self-reliance. Yet 
for all this, may there not be made such public provision, as, 
ensuring to teachers their support, and to colleges their needful 
literary and philosophical apparatus, shall at once reduce the 
personal expense of education, and secure the highest ability 
for instruction ? Thus, encouraging the youth of humble 
means, affording him free access to the fountains of knowledge ; 
while his personal support may be derived, at least in part, 
either from labor in the intervals of study, or from the aid of 
friends, and may be economically regulated in the preservation 
or formation of frugal habits, and the appropriate husbandry of 
his private resources. Open the doors of our universities for 
the admission of such ; remove the restrictions, the spirit of 
which was once ingeniously read by an indignant Sizar in the 
motto of a transatlantic University, " JVm Dominiis frustra^^ 
which he aptly rendered, "Unless you are lords, you need not come 
hither ;" invite the approach of the learner, in whom a 
slender purse cannot repress the thirst of knowledge; — 
let the State do this, — remembering that she has need of her 
sons, in the walks of learning, as well as in the camp and the 
battle-field ; and she is training them up for her servicejand 
honor, and is conferring a boon upon the Commonwealth. 
Does she jealously proscribe an aristocracy of birth and wealth, 
— then let her find its antidote in developing the nobler in- 
fluences of the minds which dwell among the poorest of her 
children. Educate one such in a town or neighborhood, and 
who can calculate the result upon the intellectual, moral and 
physical condition of the whole community. 

It was under this liberal and enlightened system, that the 
son of a small farmer, named Adams, in the desolate moorlands 
of Cornwall, whose native bent predicted that he had no voca- 
tion for raising fat oxen and prize pigs, was fitted for the Uni- 



32 EDL'CATIOxN AND PROGRESS. 

versity, became a member of St. John's College, Cambridge, 
finished his undergraduate course, as Senior Wrangler, is now 
a mathematical tutor in the same College, but| better known 
as not unjustly disputing with La Verrier, the honor of discover- 
ing the planet Neptune. It was this system, which took a 
studious country lad from a village grocery, made him the great 
light of his time, and appeals for its just appreciation, to the 
impression he left upon his age, and to the eulogies and tears 
which the Patriotism and Learning, the Liberty and Religion, 
both of Scotland and of the world, are shedding upon the recent 
grave of Thomas Chalmers. It is just such a system, that our 
Colleges are endeavoring to build up ; which, in the face of 
privation, opposition, and contemptuous neglect, they have, 
with generous ardor and undiminished fortitude, in some degree, 
built up ; and their claim upon popular sympathy, and the 
public countenance and aid, is founded upon the indubitable 
fact, that the vast majority of the men they have educated, are 
from the humbler walks of life, and that they do throw open 
their gates so widely that no young man of suitable capacity 
and energy has ever been excluded, or needs to turn away. 
And not one of these liveth unto himself. As well might the 
attempt be made to confine the rays of the glorious sun, so that, 
instead of shining for all, he might delight himself in his own 
splendor, as to restrain the influence, and circumscribe within 
their own persons, the'knowledge which the educated acquire. 
If inclination do not lead, necessity will demand, of them, to 
disperse abroad. In the various learned professions — as legis- 
lators and judges — as teachers of youth, of a different type from 
the Ichabod Cranes, of a former day — as private gentlemen — 
yea, as farmers, merchants and artisans, they are scattered 
throughout the community, and diffuse to all around them, if 
not the precise stores with which they were imbued, the prac- 
tical benefits and wholesome example of the skill and power 
which educated men bring to the service of their generation. 
And it is utterly vain to excite jealousy against such a class, 
and to attempt to ostracise the influence they are fitted to exert. 
Mind will govern. It may indeed be undisciplined, unsancti- 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 33 

fied ; and its mighty powers, perverted, may be exercised only 
to misguide and to destroy. But this only suggests the more 
forceful argument, for such adequate provision by the commu- 
nity, as may ensure and induce upon these governing minds the 
salutary results of sound education — the discipline that liberal- 
ises, refines and sanctifies ; and that hackneyed maxim has not 
yet lost its truthfulness : — 

" Ingenuas cli<licisse fideliter artes 
Emollit mores ncc sinit esse ("eros." 

The influence of the master minds in every community will 
go forth in their opinions, their examples, their instructions, 
and their very position, — and will be manifested in shaping and 
modifying the habits of the people, the laws, the institutions, 
social customs, the questions of peace and war, slavery, temper- 
ance, politics, and religion. The universality of this fact is 
suggested by Mr. Prescott, in his recent work on Peru : speak- 
ing of the Inca nobility, he observes that " they possessed 
an intellectual pre-eminence, which, no less than their station, 
gave them authority with the people. Indeed it may be said 
to have been the principal foundation of their authority." 
The race manifested " a decided superiority over the other races 
of the land, in intellectual power ; aud it cannot be denied 
that it was the fountain of that peculiar civilization and social 
polity, which raised the Peruvian monarchy above every other 
state in South America." And the bearing of this fact upon 
ourselves — with the evidence that there is no need to be possess- 
ed of aristocratic rank and wealth, in order to the exertion of 
that influence which liberally educated minds will have — is 
disclosed in the testimony of a historiographer of no mean rep- 
utation, whom the soil of Pennsylvania nourishes among the 
sons that do her honor. Mr. William B. Reed, in his late work, 
remarks upon this point, as to the character and position of the 
leaders of the American revolution, that, " as a general rule, 
they were men of high classical education." 

By educated men, you will not so misunderstand me, as re- 
ferring to a class whose attainments are limited to a diploma, 
nor yet to those pedants who have been crammed with a certain 



34 EDUCAnON AND PROGRESS. 

amount of Greek, Latin, and Mathematics. I refer to men, 
who, under whatever system their faculties were developed, are 
the possessors of undoubted intellect ; whose mental powers 
have been evoked in the process of instruction ; whom disci- 
pline has drilled and trained, and taught to think, and to inves- 
tigate for themselves, while it has but rendered them more 
docile, even while it gave them manly independence and made 
them reverent of the truth; whose social and moral nature, 
an the physical too, has been cultivated in appropriate har- 
mony with the mental, in such way, that they are both wise, 
and good, and useful men ; who, with the attainment of useful 
knowledge, have learned also how to increase it and apply it — 
adding to the general stock — reducing it to the practical wants 
of life, and contributing their share to the progress of the age, 
in arts and inventions, in truth and virtue. And this they may 
do, whether as professed students or teachers, as residents in 
universities and schools, or occupying the prominent stations of 
public life, or as preachers of the Gospel, as statesmen, as law- 
yers and physicians, as manufacturers, or artisans, or farmers, or 
as private citizens. And in all these stations the benefit of 
their influence shall be reaped by all who need their services, 
and by all with whom they dwell, in the exact measure in which 
•wisdom and knowledge are better than ignorance and imbecil- 
' ity, presumption, and imposture. 

And in coming to the conclusion of this branch of my sub- 
ject, it is in place, just here, to illustrate the whole current of 
remark upon it, with a reference, which the spirit of the occa- 
sion suggests, to three names — examples of that combination 
of influences, direct and indirect, which produce and educate 
great men. 

Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, sprung from the 
high aristocracy of France, and nursed in the bosom of wealth, 
evinced, even in his childhood, that generous enthusiasm, 
which was developed and nourished by the liberal studies and 
'Classical examples, with which he became conversant, in the 
schools of Auvergne, and in the University of Paris — so that, 
at the age of sixteen, he writes : " I look with contempt upon 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 35 

the greatness and littleness of the court, with pity on the 
emptiness and insufficiency of society, with disgust on the 
petty pedantries of the army, with indignation on all kinds of 
oppression." And thus was the spirit formed, which allured 
him, when but nineteen years of age, from the arms of his yet 
more youthful bride, to become the companion of them, who, 
on this new continent, were erecting the standard of Liberty. 
The American Declaration of Independence bursting upon his 
ear, taught him where to flesh his maiden sword, and made this 
contest his own. " At the first knowledge of this quarrel," he 
said, " my heart was enlisted, and I only thought of going to 
rejoin my standard." Benjamin Franklin did not enjoy the* 
direct advantages of a collegiate education : yet, had it not 
been for its practical equivalent, had it not been for its indi- 
rect influence in the ]}ooks he read, the patrons he found, and 
the men cf letters with whom he associated, he miglit no 
have left to his young countrymen the inheritance of that bril- 
liant example, of a soap-boiler's son and a printer's boy, be- 
coming one of the first statesmen and philosophers of his age, 
until, " Eripuit ccelo fulmen, sceptnnnque tyrannis." It was 
not, indeed, any pecuniary pressure that restrained from Uni- 
versity life, that young Virginian, whose first aspirations would 
have led him to a midshipman's berth, and who next appears 
in the character of a country surveyor ; yet, who that peruses 
his history, and reads his state-papers, and his correspondence, 
and considers the character of his counsellors, can fail to recog- 
nize the studies and the influences which formed his mind, in- 
spired his maxims, made him no less a sage and a man of let- 
ters than a military chieftain and sagacious ruler; and, in all, 
that leader of men's hearts and souls, whose memory the suf- 
frages of the world have consigned to enduring'^fame,with title 
the most illustrious she ever emblazoned — " George Washing- 
ton, the Father of his Country !" 

In discussing systems of education, I shall not go beyond the 
bare introduction of the question, whether|we have pursued 
methods the most effective, by adopting those which we have, 
at least in part, inherited from other times and other lands t 



36 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

whether it is indeed preferable, even on the score of lessening 
the pecuniary expense of education, to collect the youth who 
resort to our colleges, in cloisters and refectories modelled after 
the monasteries of old, instead of distributing them among such 
families, as offer the comforts and refinements of home, and may 
still partially exert upon them those graceful, moral, social and 
conservative influences, with which tjiey were surrounded under 
the paternal roof, amid the sweet domestic guardianship of a 
father's vigilance and a sister's love. 

But, leaving this question : It is quite possible, that in your 
.future life, not all of you, gentlemen, are to be rulers, legisla- 
tors, historians, poets, inventors, editors or teachers; but it is 
highly probable that in whatever sphere your lot may be cast, 
you will seek to exert your power ; and you will exert a certain 
influence in guiding public opinion, and will leave some 
impression on your age. Be it your care, then, to fit yourselves 
for this high function, as legitimate "Tribunes of the people," 
with noble aims, and adequate furniture, to promote truth and 
to confront error, to resist the arts of demagogues, and to refute 
the plausible sophistries, with which, that which calls itself 
progress, would impose upon your minds its futile chimaras ; 
when with no large and profound views of things, but drawing 
hasty conclusions from their surface, the opinionative, the 
flippant, the selfish and the shallow pretender, the pert " Sir 
Oracle," comes forth with his newly vamped, yet stale projects 
of change, misnamed reform. 

Far be it from me, to oppose all progress, or to exhort you 
to a blind defence of time-honored abuses, emulous only of that 
dogged temper of the Bourbons, of whom it was said that they 
•'•' never forgot anything, and never learned anything." There 
is a certain arrangement of Divine Providence, under which its 
own plan of melioration in our fallen world is accomplished by 
degrees. Creation itself was a gradual process. Revelation 
was not complete in its first announcements, tho\jgh now full, 
and justly claiming to be the only safe lamp for our feet, and 
the only true light of our path. The conditions of man have 
been improved, by the enlarging discoveries of science and the 



EDUCATION' AXD PROGRESS. 37 

inventions of art ; and the progress of o:n- rice may be esti- 
mated by the monuments of its gradual emergence from despot- 
ism and darkness, to civil and religious freedom, to the enjoy- 
ment of the more appropriate means of knowledge and happi- 
ness. 

But now, I am warned that I have trespassed long upon youi 
patience. Nor does it seem needful here to discuss at great 
length the principles that should guide us in the exertion of a 
right influence upon the age ; and I shall do but little more 
than to set them down in the way of conclusions from these 
preceding remarks. 

Let, then, no merely selfish ends predominate with you. The 
acquisition of personal ease, wealth, reputation, pleasure, or 
power, pursued as the chief ends of life, are inferior at best, and 
should ever be regarded as secondary to the noble ambition of 
promoting the public welfare, — aiming 

" To scatter bk'ssings roun<l a smiling land, 
And read your history in a nation's eyes." 

Even when public benefit is but the incidental result of per- 
sonal endeavor, how does it detract from the motives which 
only conduce to this result by indirection. How it dims the 
glory of England's great admiral, that his splendid naval 
achievements should have been prompted by such a low ambi- 
tion as Nelson is recorded to have avowed — " a peerage, or 
Westminster Abbey." How does it belittle the " wizard of 
the North" to discover, in Abbotsford, the miniature imitation 
of baronial towers, and to read the confession that he used his 
pen, as an enchanter's wand for turning thought into gold, for 
the enrichment of a family, and for the enrolment of its name 
among those of a mere hereditary nobility. Nor even in aiming 
at the public good, should webe limited to that which is material, 
sensual and worldly. Valuable as is the improvement of the phy- 
sical and social conditions of man; sublime and dignified as are 
the attainments of philosophy, of art, of mental freedom, of 
regulated civil and religious liberty ; these are not ultimate 
ends ; and there is such a thing as these degenerating into a 
gross materialism, and into a profligate licentiousness. This 



38 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

earth itself is reserved for high destinies. Redeemed by its 
Maker, as the field wherein lies hidden a peculiar treasure for 
Himself, it is to be cultivated for Him, and its children trained 
for a divine destiny in His service and joy. Both our benefit, 
and that benefit of others which we may promote, is in that 
loftiei*" inheritance which is incorruptible, undecayed, unfading, 
— in glory, honor and immortality. This world is the theatre of 
that high achievement, in which the universe is to read the 
manifold riches of the divine wisdom and goodness. To illus- 
trate and subserve this result, and to obtain and diffuse the 
blessings which it involves, is the ultimate design of all right 
enterprise, and the essence of all real progress. There can be 
no higher or better end for man than to glorify God and enjoy 
Him forever. 

Again ; studiously consult the lights of history. It will tell 
you what has been tried, what has failed, and why it ought to 
have failed, what errors to avoid, and what promises real 
utility and success. Its pregnant examples teem with great 
maxims for the relations and duties of public life, and for the 
enlightened course of the patriotic citizen. It is a graphic, 
living philosophy. Study thoroughly also the political history 
of constitutions, and particularly those of your own coun- 
try, — the nature and harmony of their provisions, — and the 
spirit and reasons of the laws. Many a tyro and sciolist in 
moral and political philosophy, has daringly rushed forward 
with profane hand to mutilate, under the pretence of mending, 
what matured wisdom and piety, and lofty patriotism, have re- 
vered with the awe becoming solemn and sacred things. It is 
not always dotard ignorance, the selfish pride of opinion, 
bigoted adherence to custom, blind obstinacy, and superstitious 
confidence in the infallibility of preceding generations, which 
cries out with firm resolve, — "JVolximti^ leges mutariJ^ A pro- 
found critic long ago, made a remark, which might have sug- 
gested the subsequent position of Pope, that " a little learning 
is a dangerous thing." With a sagacity that might find a 
fitting theme in many other relations, he observed, " that men 
who could only read the Latin Vulgate, were oflfensively posi- 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 39 

tive in their interpretation of prophesy ; those who got as far 
as the Greek Septuagint became more moderate and cautious j 
but those who ascended to the mastery of the original Hebrew^ 
became perfectly modest and almost timid." Not only in the 
hurried dogmas of an editorial leader, but in the graver atmos- 
phere of legislative counsellings, have men forgotten, in their 
subjection to excited impulses, the lessons and the warnings, 
the lights and the restraints of old examples and considerate 
law, which though of ancient origin, belong to all time, and 
are ever fresh and vital ; not mere foils for the transcendent 
wisdom of this wonderful, and somewhat pert, nineteenth cen- 
tury. This very century, notwithstanding its boasted light and 
freedom, has produced examples of bigotry, illiberal ity, and 
indocile and oppressive prejudice, as vicious as any that may be 
culled from the Records of the past ; even to the judgment of 
Galileo, or the burning of Servetus. 

But above all, let your views, on all questions of morals and 
government, of political and personal deportment, be formed 
on the principles of the revealed word of God. There is a 
thinly veiled infidelity which utters its flippant oracles some- 
times through the mouth-piece of a ribald press, sometimes 
from the rostrum invaded by charlatan philosophers, and itin- 
erant lecturers on all the ologies, — and sometimes echoed from 
lips that should keep knowledge and teach wisdom, — the im- 
pertinence which talks of the Bible as a misinterpreted reve- 
lation, as an obselete authority, and an antiquated thing, to be 
laid aside and forgotten, outrivalled and exploded by the newei 
wisdom of this age. In the worship of mere science, and the 
acceptance of every pretension to it, because it seems to be 
" some new thing," — and in the abuse of freedom of con- 
science, men have often fallen into the mischievous absurdity 
of " compassing themselves about with sparks of their own 
kindling," and rejoiced in the vain deceit, as if they had been 
regenerated with a baptism of divine light. The race is not 
extinct, which, w^hile it strains at a gnat, can swallow a camel. 
Discarding the supernatural miracles of the Bible, they doaton 
lying wonders and more incredible marvels of their own inven- 



40 EDL'CATION AND PROGUESJ. 

tion. Rejecting the scriptural and rational testimony of eternal 
truth, which instructs our satisPietl faith that the heavens and 
the earth and all beings that are therein, were made by an in- 
telligent Creator, and that men are the ofTspring of God,^ — they 
prefer a cosmogany, which, by some fortuitous, or sponta- 
neous perpetual motion of mechanical forces, educes now an 
universe, and now a planet from the impalpable , vapor of the 
dim nebula3, and developes intellectual and immortal man from 
apes and tadpoles, the spawn of frogs ! Venerable truths are 
reduced to the category of mere isms, and a revealed theology 
is represented as the figment of system-makers and theorising 
divines, — equivalent wath necromancy and astrology. Expe- 
diency becomes the basis of moral obligation, and law must be 
suited to the dimensions of that selfishness which strives to veil 
its hideous deformity under the sanction, and by invoking for 
its authority, the suffrage, of that most abused thing, " the 
genius of a free people." 

In the restless endeavor to get rid of the dictates of the Bible, 
men array themselves in various, and even opposite shapes. 
Sometime.s it is open infidelity, sometimes it is rationalism ; 
sometimes their schemes are baptized with the name of holy 
truths, and they have " gospels," and " regenerations," and 
"faith," and " milleniums ;" and they have high-sounding 
phrases, such as the " intense," the "earnest," and the " inte- 
rior life," and transcendental visions of " a good time coming;" 
— and " with themouth they show much love." But all are prac- 
tically agreed in this, that the wisdom and the authority 
which are from above, are set aside ; and, while they would 
but heal the hurt of the people slightly, they will not stand in 
the ways and see, nor ask for the old paths, where is the good 
way, that they may w^alk therein, and find rest for their souls. 
Truly, the word of the Lord is tried ; men have branded it as an 
imposture ; they have fought against it with the weapons of pseu- 
do philosophy; they have banished it to dusty shelves, and perse- 
cuted and burnt it wuth fire : yet — there it is ! It has come 
forth as gold from the furnace ; and while the vain imaginations 
of men have been busy in fetching up from the depths the sys- 



EDUCATION AND PROGRE>s. 41 

tems and plans with which they would detrude it from its sov- 
ereignty, — only to be hurled back into the Stygian pools 
where they were spaw'ned, — Faith, Conscience, and Truth, 
maintain their steady foundations, and neither atheist nor devil 
has yet prevailed for their overthrow% 

There are still left a few old-fashioned people ; who rejoice m 
the wisdom that cometh from above, and who can reason, 
too, out of the Scriptures of God, with no despicable force. 
Nay, here is one remarkable fact ; — such are the inconsis- 
tencies of men, or such the homage which Revelation compels 
from those who hate it, that it is no imcommon thing, even, 
for those who resort to it but to pervert, to make their appeal 
thither, for the sanction of schemes that are directly condemned 
by its whole genius and spirit, and by its clearest precepts ; 
and, in the clamorous charity that folly lauds, or knavery, for 
its own sinister purposes, pretends, we are required to do hom- 
age to every vagary that may be propounded by inflated conceit, 
under the pains and penalties of bigotry, " without benefit of 
clergy ;" and to revere as the accredited expounders of Divine 
faith and truth, whatsoever arrays itself in black coat and white 
cravat, and writes Reverend before its paltry name, as if herein 
were the conclusive sanctions and credentials of any and all the 
absurdities put forth by bastard philosophy, heretical impos- 
ture, quackery, and empiricism, and whatsoever loveth and 
maketh a lie. Now, while there is abundance of other and 
more honorable evidence, nevertheless, this very indiscriminat- 
ing credence, — the delusion, sometimes, even of the children of 
the light, and the pretext of children of another sort, — and all 
this effort to bias the word of God, are in themselves, at least, 
an involuntary deference to the fact that Christianity and its in- 
stitutions have a strong hold upon the public mind. Happy, 
too, are we, in this, that the Bible is thus free to the appeal of 
all ; and all we ask for it, is, that it may be fairly examined, 
both as to its origin and its teachings, and that by this sure 
test, all opinions may be tried. Happy for us — happy for our 
country — happy for the world, if, with a candid, docile, and obe- 
dient spirit, men resort to this law and testimony. It fears no in- 



42 EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 

vestigation. It is too late in the day for the puny assaults of 
nibbling critics, and we demand for it supreme authority. 
It is a book of principles, suggestive of all that is venerable in 
government and law, of all that is dignified and valuable in 
the institutions of society, of all that is salutary and graceful 
in the deportment of life, of all that is peaceful and sure, and 
sanctifying in the hope of immortality. It may not bend, nor 
give way before human devices for the melioration of the 
world. That is not melioration which it does not sanction. It 
is a book for man, for all climes and for all generations ; like the 
salvation it proclaims, and the God whom it reveals, it is the gift 
and the law of Heaven, not for the Jew only, but also for the 
Gentile. It was constructed, not for the infancy of the world, but 
for its maturest and brightest age, to bring about that age, and 
to adorn and control it, when that great characteristic of time, 
which angels heralded, shall be universally realised in " glory 
to God in the Highest, on earth, peace and good will to men," 
when Jehovah shall reign, and the multitudes of the nations 
shall be glad thereof. It is itself, the infallible expositor of 
what is local, temporary, and obsolete, and of that also which 
is universal, permanent, and good for man. That very book 
itself suggests, and as its influence is felt, controls and pro- 
duces change in the condition of society. Mistake, perversion, 
there may be, there have been. Hierarchical and kingly des- 
potisms, have, in other da3'S, supported oppression wnth argu- 
ments professing to emanate from divine authority. But the 
word of God was imprisoned then. These are the days of its 
freedom, and its healthful influences are unchained as the moun- 
tain stream and the mountain air. As men drink of them and 
breathe them, as they better understand and better obey its 
holy truths, change has indeed come, civilization has ad- 
vanced, government is defined, law is vindicated, human 
rights are established, our own land is horn, and moves to its 
proud eminence among the nations, salvation flows to the 
ends of the earth, and the trumpet-sound of jubilee proclaims 
liberty throughout the lands, to all the inhabitants of the 
world. 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 43 

This, gentlemen, is that sure word of Truth, to which ye do 
well to take heed as unto a light shining in a dark place. 

But, farther, gentlemen, forget not the importance of being 
personally under its influence. Received into your hearts, it 
shall form in you a spirit and character of uprightness, essen- 
tial to all usefulness and worthy success. It will direct your 
aims, and preserve you from selfish motives and unmanly fears. 
It will sustain your firm soul from sinking under trial and dis- 
couragement. It will furnish you "with consolations which 
philosophy cannot command, nor stoicism emulate. It will 
purify your hearts and your ways ; and it will introduce you 
to the commonwealth of the saints, and inaugurate you into the 
illustrious citizenship of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

'• Learning has borne such fruit in other days, 
On all her branches ; piety has found 
Friends in the friends of science ; and true prayer 
Has flowed from lips wet with Castalian dews." 

Then, be it yours to maintain allegiance to God ; to be en- 
lightened and ardent lovers of your country and of man ; to 
consecrate your powers to these sublime interests. Illustrate 
and commend the principles of rational liberty and genuine re- 
ligion, and exemplify their excellence by the love and practice 
of whatsoever things are honest and pure, lovely and of good 
report. Be of those who draw upon the land the smile of 
heaven. 

And thus may you and your country be exalted in righteous- 
ness ; and, like the Roman Cornelia, pointing to her children 
with a patriot mother's pride, and exclaiming, " these are 
ray jewels," so may this noble commonwealth, through your 
means maintaining her honorable rank as the " Key-stone of 
the Union," point to you, her sons, as the bright illustrations 
of her heraldic motto, — the worthy examples and living imper- 
sonations of her manly, Christian, 

"virtue, liberty, and independence." 












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